253 pages
English language
Published 1965 by Africana Pub. Corp..
The interpreters
by Wole Soyinka
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The novel is set in the 1960s, in post-independence and pre-civil war Nigeria. The novel is divided into two sections and set between Lagos and Ibadan, a university city, across a period of several months during the rainy season. There are five main characters in the novel: the foreign ministry clerk Egbo, the university professor Bandele, the journalist Sagoe, the engineer turned sculptor Sekoni, and the artist Kola. The central characters are friends from high school who are returning from studies in foreign universities and entering middle-class professions. Each is presented as a type and each has his own way of interpreting the world. But through their shared upbringing and camaraderie as self-identified intellectuals, there is a degree of commonality in their worldviews. They attempt to solve the moral decadence that plagues Nigerian society, each trying to “interpret” himself in relation to the society they inhabit and discover the right …
The novel is set in the 1960s, in post-independence and pre-civil war Nigeria. The novel is divided into two sections and set between Lagos and Ibadan, a university city, across a period of several months during the rainy season. There are five main characters in the novel: the foreign ministry clerk Egbo, the university professor Bandele, the journalist Sagoe, the engineer turned sculptor Sekoni, and the artist Kola. The central characters are friends from high school who are returning from studies in foreign universities and entering middle-class professions. Each is presented as a type and each has his own way of interpreting the world. But through their shared upbringing and camaraderie as self-identified intellectuals, there is a degree of commonality in their worldviews. They attempt to solve the moral decadence that plagues Nigerian society, each trying to “interpret” himself in relation to the society they inhabit and discover the right way to live.